Monday, February 26, 2018

Make Four Collages Each Week:I've set a new goal, to make at least 4 collages every week. These days One A Day just isn't happening, no matter how strong my early morning intentions. This one is from last week, using some cut out flowers from my image files. I'm keeping most of the little ones fairly simply, doing them as an entering the studio warm-up. It's such fun to open a box of collage materials, (compost), grab a few papers that interest me in the moment and play around to see what happens. This is about as close as I want to get to creating something like a still life. I find it fun to pore through my magazines and catalogs in the evening while sitting with my husband in front of the television and cut out images that I might use. Daily Paintwork Gallery:The other bit of news is that I've joined the tribe over at Daily Paint Works, the brainchild of David and Carol Marine and friends. I'm in the process of uploading images of my available work and listing it in the Daily Paint Works catalog. If you've had a yen to buy one of my works, there are lots of sale and I'll be adding many more as the weeks progress. Get to my DPW Gallery by clicking HERE or by tapping the Daily Paint Works slideshow over in the right hand column. Even if you aren't in the market for more art just now I'd appreciate your stopping by and leaving a comment. It gets a bit lonely in the studio some days.(Update: I'm no longer posting works to DPW.)

Art Tip: Removing acrylic from hands

Use ordinary hand sanitizer to quickly remove acrylic paint and medium from your hands. The alcohol in the sanitizer dissolves the acrylic. Wipe well with a paper towel and then wash with soap and water.

Art Tip: brush cleaning

As I work with acrylic medium for glue or with acrylic paints I stand my brushes in a bucket of water on my work table and give them a soap and water cleanup every day or so. But eventually my brushes get gunky and sometimes I forget to clean them. That's when I clean them with Murphy's Oil Soap. I keep an inch of MOS mixed 1:1 with water in a tall plastic tub (Feta from Costco) and put caked brushes in that solution overnight. By the next day the soap has softened the brush and with a bit of elbow grease I can get the brushes back to useable. This also works for brushes used with oil paint. I gave up using oils but wanted to save those good brushes and Murphy's Oil Soap came to the rescue. Get it at the grocery store.